


Moonshining

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Crossdressing, F/M, Moonshine, Speakeasies, just a thin veneer of gangster politics and illegal distilleries, pasted on as an excuse to write about ill-advised blowjobs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:48:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28371150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Alexander Hilbert distills illegal liquor for the Goddard Speakeasy in a little lab-cum-doctor's office just outside of town, set up in an abandoned watermill. The strange little man who delivers his supplies—actually a strange little woman, not that he's noticed—is equal parts pest and temptation... and, to his confusion, apparently attracted to him.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character





	1. Chapter 1

“And that’s the last of them.” The fat little Black man who usually delivered Alexander’s supplies moved the final clinking crate from his handcart and stacked it with the rest, next to the last week’s worth of deliveries. Said last week’s worth of deliveries were still stacked against the wall, waiting for Alexander to run low enough on something that he would be forced to unpack them.

“Now, how about I give you a hand with the unpacking?” the man—Rosy, that was his name, or at least his nickname; something about having a rosy outlook on life—asked, as if reading Alexander’s mind.

Alexander waved the man away. “No need. I do not like having other people in here when I am working.”

“You’re always working, Doc.” Rosy eyed the cot in the corner that Alexander slept in most nights, and then turned back to the stack of boxes. “Let me get some of this unpacked and stowed away for you.”

Alexander stepped between the man and the boxes, glaring down at him. “No. Go away. I have work to do.”

Rosy grimaced up at him. “About that...”

“What?”

“You recall having a conversation last week with the boss about keeping things organized in here?”

He did. Mr. Cutter had come for what he had called “just a little social visit,” and had eyed the stack of unopened crates with mild disgust before threatening to send someone to organize Alexander’s life. Alexander had chosen not to take it seriously, but perhaps he should have. “I do not need another person rummaging around in my lab,” he declared.

This pronouncement got another dubious look from Rosy. “You remember what happened last time there was an altercation with one of our suppliers?”

Alexander winced. He did remember. Mace Fisher had almost died on the operating table and had permanently lost use of his right arm. Perhaps some of it had been because Fisher had put off his own care for the sake of his injured subordinates, but the rest of the fault could be attributed to the fact that this room, lab and distillery and doctor’s office in one, had been too full of injured people and misplaced items for Alexander to locate the necessary supplies by the time he had gotten to Fisher. “I see your point,” he admitted grudgingly.

Rosy smiled brightly at Alexander as if he had not just forced Alexander to relive a failure that was still sharp in his mind. And then he gently but firmly moved Alexander to the side and made for the stack of crates. “Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

“Oh, please do make yourself at home,” Alexander said bitterly, throwing his hands into the air in frustration and returning to the table he had been working at before Rosy had interrupted him. He winced at the sound of splintering wood, and glanced back over his shoulder. The stocky little man had removed his jacket and tie and had rolled his shirtsleeves up, and was now attacking the lid of one of the crates with a crowbar.

Alexander turned back to his work and tried to ignore the noise.

This was _such_ a bother.

Rosemary opened the top layer of crates. Bottles—medical supplies, she supposed, or perhaps flavorings for the clear alcohol that the stills in the other room produced—padded around with rags. A glance at the deep shelves that lined the edges of the room made her frown; there appeared to be no order at all to the way things were stacked on the deep shelves that lined the walls of the room.

She glanced over her shoulder at Dr. Hilbert, who had hunched over his desk once more. “You mind if I do some reorganization, Doc?”

He shot a glare back her way. “If you must,” he growled.

What a miserable man. “Any constraints?”

He let out a huff of irritation and shoved his way to his feet. “I will just do it myself.”

Rosemary got between him and the crates and attempted to herd him back into his desk. “Oh, no. You’re a busy man, remember? Hard at work. This is what I’m here for, so let me do it.” She glanced around as she herded. “Medical supplies over there?” She pointed at where a spare cot was folded up and slotted between two of the shelves. “And I’d guess stuff for distilling there,” she said, pointing at another set of shelves. “I just don’t want you grabbing for laudenum and getting rat poison by mistake, is all.”

She was right up close to him now, and he glared over the top of his metal-rimmed glasses at her, his pale blue eyes very cold. And then he let out another huff and took a backwards step towards his desk. “Fine. That all sounds… fine. Keep rat poison on bottom shelf somewhere.”

Rosemary smiled up at him—her most charming smile, the one she deployed strategically when facing down sour-pusses and grouches like Dr. Hilbert—and those cold eyes widened, clearly startled. He stared down at her for a long, quiet moment, and then cleared his throat and turned away from her, retreating the rest of the way back to his desk.

Rosemary shrugged and turned her attention back to the shelves, shoving her sleeves more firmly into place as she did. Making order out of a mess like this was one of the great joys of her life, especially when so much of the rest of it involved putting herself in mortal peril. If she could turn this room into a more functional work space for Dr. Hilbert along the way, that would, of course, be a bonus, but imposing organization on the disordered mass of bottles and packets would be its own reward.

Alexander had expected to find Rosy’s presence distracting, but as he wrote up his weekly log from his notes, he found that the clink of bottles and the shuffle of the dust cloth that Rosy had rustled up from somewhere and put to good use faded into the background. So much so that when he finished his work and stood up from his desk to stretch, he was startled by the other man’s presence. Apparently the lower shelves had already succumbed to Rosy’s organizing hand; he was now standing on an upended crate, stretching his arm at an awkward angle to dust the top shelves.

Alexander crossed the room to inspect Rosy’s work. There, medications and tinctures, carefully arranged by type. There, clean bandages; scalpels and needles and syringes here, carefully sorted and stored in smaller cubbies on a shelf. Then, on the other side of the cots, the flavorings he used to make the alcohol he brewed here more palatable, and the yeasts he used in the brewing process. Several shelves of glassware and rubber hoses, too, and several more with empty bottles in neat rows, waiting to be filled with the results of his work. Everything in a logical place and absurdly tidy, and he found himself almost resenting Rosy for it.

Rosy let out a sigh and pulled his arm back to his side, standing on his tiptoes to squint suspiciously at the top shelf he had been cleaning.

“Do not bother,” Alexander said. “I cannot reach them without a step-stool either.”

“I suppose not, but it leaves me feeling like the job’s half done,” Rosy shot back, sounding exasperated. Still, he turned to step down from the box.

There was a splintering noise, and Alexander found himself half-diving to catch Rosy in his arms as the edge of the crate he had been standing on broke under his weight and sent the man plummeting face-first towards the floor. He stumbled under the man’s weight, but kept his feet, and more importantly kept Rosy from the injury that plummeting so unexpectedly to the hard flagstones of the floor would almost certainly have caused.

Rosy laughed breathlessly as he got his feet back under him, taking a step back from Alexander. “Thanks, Doc. That would have been a nasty spill.”

Alexander almost resented it when he was relieved of Rosy’s weight in his arms. The man had been warm and solid and… well, perhaps Alexander spent too much time away from other people, if such an accidental embrace as that had been could make him feel like sparks were jumping beneath his skin.

Rosy cleared his throat and turned his attention to dusting off the front of his vest and trousers, both of which were looking rather worse for wear after the cleaning spree he had just gone on. “Well, that’s that. I’d better get along to my other duties,” he said, his voice sounding just as awkward as his demeanor. And then he turned and gathered up the crate he’d been using as a makeshift stepstool, adding it to the stack already on his dolly before rolling his sleeves down and buttoning them again.

“I’ll send someone to get the rest of these out of your way.” He gestured at the stack of now-empty crates by the door. And then he was sliding his jacket back onto his shoulders and wheeling the dolly out of the door, calling a brief “See you next week, Doc,” behind him as he went.

“Yes. See you,” Alexander said to the already-closed door into his lab.

How was he supposed to get back to work after _that_?

Rosemary took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh as she loaded the empty crates up into the back of the automobile she’d driven out here, packing them on top of the hidden panel that hid the crates full of the latest batch of alcohol from Dr. Hilbert’s stills. Perhaps she should go back for the rest of the empty crates as more camouflage for that hidden panel, but that last little encounter with Dr. Hilbert, where she’d ended up briefly in his arms, had been almost too awkward to bear. He’d stared down his nose at her in something that wasn’t quite disgust, and she’d almost tripped over her own feet in her haste to stand up straight again and get away from him.

A damn shame that he was so unpleasant, she found herself thinking. Though why she should think that she didn’t know, aside from the fact that… well, if she was being honest with herself, she never had been able to resist a pair of baby blues, even ones as cold as his were. And his cheekbones…

She laughed at herself as she began the drive back into town. Trust her to be attracted to the world’s biggest grouch. Ah, well. As she always said, there was no accounting for taste, even hers. And it wasn’t as if she’d ever _act_ on that attraction. The man was so full of prickles that she would never dare, and it wasn’t as if he ever left his lab. As long as that was the only place she ever saw him, she could get through her weekly supply runs just fine.

Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t leave her itching for more, if she ever somehow ended up in his arms again.


	2. Chapter 2

Alexander would have liked to forget entirely about Rosy until he was forced to again by the man’s next supply run, but the newly orderly state of his shelves was a constant reminder, as was the stack of empty crates that hadn’t yet been removed from his laboratory. At least they were stacked neatly along the wall, no more a distraction than when they had been full.

His next visit from Rosy came two days later, just after midnight. He had been awake, of course—he often was, not that Rosy had any reason to know it—and his only warning that the man was about to barge in was a light knock on the door, followed by a quiet click as he turned the knob.

“Oh!” Rosy exclaimed. “Right. Guess I don’t have to worry about waking you up.” At Alexander’s glare, Rosy raised his eyebrows significantly and added “I’m here for the empty crates. Heard they still needed to be picked up.”

“At midnight?”

Rosy shrugged. “I’m just coming off patrol. I was in the area. It was convenient. Or don’t you want these out of your way?” The man’s calm and matter-of-fact tone was as effective as a scolding.

And after all, it was not the first time that Rosy had shown up at odd hours to drop something off or cart something away. The problem was that now Alexander was _noticing_ the man. When previously, Rosy had easily slipped in and out without disturbing him beyond that initial knock he always gave the door in order to alert Alexander to his presence, now Alexander found himself painfully aware of where in the room Rosy was at all times.

There was no reason for it, either, other than that he did not often find himself touching other people beyond his duties as a doctor. Those few seconds where Rosy had ended up in his arms had clearly had an effect on him.

Whether good or bad, he did not know.

Rosemary had popped back in to collect the remaining empty crates at a time when she had hoped Dr. Hilbert would be sleeping. She knew the man had an apartment somewhere nearby, even if he chose to sleep on that uncomfortable looking cot in his lab most days, but she hadn’t been in luck.

And he had _glared_ at her the entire time she’d been loading the empty crates up, that _awful_ man. She had changed her mind. She wasn’t attracted to him at all. Him and his cheekbones and those goddamn cold blue eyes, boring a hole in her as she worked.

She sighed.

Lying to herself about the matter wasn’t working at _all_.

Changing the mash in one of the stills was always a process that left Alexander sweating and exhausted, and covered in bits of fermented grain and fruit. Today’s still had taken a good deal of scrubbing to get ready for the next batch, and at the end of the day, he made it as far as stripping out of his stinking clothing and sluicing himself off at the sink that occupied the corner of the room before he collapsed into his cot, without even bothering to put on clean underclothing. He was certain he would be able to hear the sound of anyone entering the building in time to get dressed, anyway.

He didn’t.

Instead, he slept hard, only to be awoken, groggy and irritable, by the sound of a brisk knock on his door. “Get yourself decent quick if you aren’t!” Rosy called through the door, before opening it without preamble. Alexander snatched his spectacles off the little table next to his cot and put them on, and shoved himself upright in order to glare at the cheerful little man. Well. Rosy was about to get an eyeful whether he wished to or not. Perhaps that would keep the man from barging in to Alexander’s lab at all hours of the day and night.

Rosy didn’t appear to have noticed Alexander’s state of undress yet. He had backed into the room, handcart in tow, and was currently unloading the pile of boxes stacked on it.

Bad enough the man burst in on Alexander without warning. But being ignored like this was too much. Alexander swung his legs off the edge of his cot, wincing when his feet hit the cold flagstones of the floor, and cleared his throat.

“I am trying to give you _some_ privacy, you know,” Rosy said conversationally. “Or are you saying you need some help with that?” He set the last crate down as he spoke, looking deliberately over his shoulder and meeting Alexander’s eyes... and then letting his gaze drift down lower, clearly resting on the jaunty morning erection Alexander bore.

Alexander’s breath caught in his throat. “What are you suggesting?” he heard himself ask hoarsely.

Rosy licked his lips and bit the lower one, hard enough that it looked as if he were trying to draw blood. “Whatever you’d like.”

Rosy had wide, plush lips, and Alexander thought he would quite like to fuck them, if what he said next didn’t chase the man off. “Come suck my cock, then.”

A little smirk twisted the corner of Rosy’s mouth, and he locked the door with a slow deliberation before crossing the room to Alexander’s cot. Alexander was shivering uncontrollably now, and not just from the cold. It had been years since he had even approached the subject of sex with another person. To have this almost-stranger eager to take him up on such an offer now left him shaken to the core.

And now he had Rosy kneeling between his legs, had Rosy’s hands on his thighs as the other man studied Alexander’s cock with an expression of avarice on his face. It was too much for Alexander; he shut his eyes and leaned back on the cot, letting out a low huff of breath as Rosy’s fingers traced the contours of his cock gently. Those fingers closed firmly around the shaft of it and Rosy’s lips closed around the head and Alexander’s mind blanked out in a pleasurable haze. He was good at this, this strange little man. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised Alexander that Rosy was good at it. The man was a flirt, and clearly had the skills to back up his flirtations.

Rosy’s tongue, hot and velvet, caressed the sensitive spot just beneath his glans and Alexander found himself thrusting involuntarily against Rosy’s mouth, cursing softly as he did. Oh, this man’s mouth was better than Alexander had imagined.

“You all right?” Rosy lifted his mouth from Alexander’s cock to speak, though not far, his breath still warm against it.

Alexander grunted in response and put his hand on the back of Rosy’s head. He wanted to linger on this, wanted to pretend for a moment that someone wanted him, that this wasn’t some strange escalation in the turf war between him and Rosy. And it was easy to pretend; Rosy went back to work with a gratifying enthusiasm, one hand still wrapped around Alexander’s shaft, the other cupping his balls, a pair of fingers sneaking behind them to stroke along the sensitive little ridge of flesh right behind.

Would this man fuck him if he asked? But that thought was too much; Alexander came hard, thrusting deep into Rosy’s mouth as he did. Rosy made a choked noise, but did not withdraw until Alexander was done.

Alexander opened his eyes to find Rosy looking up at him, a very strange expression on his face.

“Next time, give me a little warning before you come,” Rosy said, snagging a corner of Alexander’s sheets and wiping away a trail of white from the corner of his mouth.

“There will be a next time?” Alexander asked hesitantly.

Rosy dropped the sheet and smacked Alexander’s bare thigh playfully. “Not that either of us has the time for it, but if the opportunity arises…” He trailed off, a contemplative little smirk on his face. “Well, we’ll see. Now get yourself cleaned up and ready for the day. You’ve got work to do.”

And then Rosy was back to his feet and across the room, opening the crates he had brought, and Alexander still did not understand what had just happened. He sluiced himself off again at the small sink in the corner of the room and got dressed in the fresh clothing he had shunned the night before, his mind far distant from the routine actions of his body. By the time he was ready to work, Rosy was gone.

Alexander had not even heard the man leave.

_All right. I suppose there might be some interest there_ , Rosemary found herself thinking as she drove back towards town with her load of empty crates, which had been emptied of the glass bottles they’d carried at a speed she hadn’t known herself capable of. She’d been in a hurry to get out of there after he had finished. She wasn’t sure why; perhaps it had been the lost, confused look on his face, or the fact that she wasn’t certain she even liked the man.

Lust, sure, she had plenty of that. But until she’d been given orders to keep his lab tidy, he’d mostly ignored her every time she had come in with a delivery, or had, occasionally, barked requests that she acquire something for him that he was running low on.

And that lust had lead her to… _that._ To going down on the man just because he happened to have morning wood when she arrived, when really she should have beat a quick retreat the moment she had realized that he didn’t have any clothing on under the blanket he had been asleep under. But no, she never had had any sense at all. Completely shameless, too, or so her mother had always called her.

But hell, if he’d asked her to, she would have fucked him right then and there.

Maybe she was just bored. Not that there was anything boring about being a courier for a speakeasy, but even the exciting nights had a routine to them. So maybe that was it. She was bored, and she was looking to play with Dr. Hilbert to ease some of the tedium she had been feeling as of late.

And she would definitely be replaying today’s encounter in her head the next time she masturbated, because _fuck_ , as easings of tedium went? That had been _damn_ good at distracting her from her own thoughts.

Hopefully it had done the same for him.


	3. Chapter 3

The next time Rosy was in Alexander’s lab, all Alexander could think about was the fat little man on his knees with Alexander’s cock in his mouth.

He tried to think about something else. He really did.

His cock had other ideas, though, and Alexander soon found himself as hard as a rock and completely unaware of the world around him.

Well, almost completely unaware. He was still intensely aware of Rosy’s position in his lab at all times. Thank goodness he had been working at his desk when Rosy had come in; he could hide his erection beneath, and hopefully Rosy wouldn’t notice.

“Doc! Hey, Doc!”

Alexander started as Rosy’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Yes?”

“You okay?”

“Of course.”

“Only you didn’t answer when I asked if you needed a hand with anything else.” Rosy was just visible out of the corner of Alexander’s eye, and he looked more than a little concerned. “You haven’t been having trouble with fumes again, have you?”

Alexander shook his head, though the fact that Rosy remembered such a thing happening well enough to worry about it when Alexander did not remember Rosy ever being present for such an incident was a pointed reminder that he had not been so aware of Rosy in the past, something that he now felt a stab of guilt for. “No,” he growled, taking that guilt out on a man who definitely didn’t deserve Alexander’s ill temper.

Rosy leaned his hip against the desk and reached out, putting his hand on Alexander’s forehead. “Just let me check...”

“I am fine,” Alexander snapped, waving Rosy’s hand away.

“There’s the cranky brewer I know and love,” Rosy said in a cheerful voice.

The word love hit Alexander harder than it should have. He knew Rosy was teasing him, that a single bout of fellatio was just that and nothing more, but a fierce pang of longing pierced his chest, all the same. “I have nothing for you,” he growled. “Go away.”

Rosy straightened up... and then paused. “You sure you have nothing for me, Doc?” he asked in a low, breathy voice.

Alexander glanced up... and found Rosy’s eyes riveted on the erection that still tented the front of Alexander’s trousers. Some demon of perversity overcame Alexander at the sight of Rosy’s fixed stare; he scooted his chair back from his desk before dropping his left hand into his lap and squeezing his erection through the fabric of his trousers. “Are you talking about this?”

Rosy nodded, biting his lower lip and then releasing it, the tip of his tongue darting out to moisten his lips.

“And what makes you think this is something you can help me with, hm?” Alexander thrust against his hand, and Rosy let out a little whine of desire, deep in his throat.

“The door is locked,” Rosy said, an oblique answer to Alexander’s question. “And I’ve got just enough spare time before I need to be somewhere else.”

Alexander could not find the words to accept what Rosy was offering. Instead, he scooted his chair further from his desk, making space for the other man. And Rosy knew what Alexander wanted; a moment later he was on his knees, once more between Alexander’s legs. He had the placket of Alexander’s pants undone in an instant, followed swiftly by the buttons that held the lower part of his union suit shut.

Rosy’s mouth was just as delightful as the last time it had been on Alexander’s cock, his lips warm, his tongue mobile. Alexander found himself fucking Rosy’s mouth, short, gentle thrusts that Rosy moved with, taking him deeper each time, until suddenly, Alexander was buried entirely in Rosy’s mouth, the hot suction of it driving him mad.

He remembered, suddenly, Rosy’s request from the other day, started to speak “—Rosy! I am about to—“ but those were the only words he got out before he orgasmed hard, his head thrown back, his fingers tangling with Rosy’s carefully-waved hair.

Rosy’s mouth hung open when he lifted his head from Alexander’s lap, and Alexander seized Rosy’s face in both hands, pulling the fat little man into an open-mouthed kiss. Rosy let out a startled little yelp but joined in with some enthusiasm, his lips shaping themselves to Alexander’s mouth, his tongue darting out and meeting Alexander’s. The taste of Alexander’s come mixed with what could only be the flavor of Rosy, salt and musk and human, intoxicating in its complexity.

Rosy shivered and moaned, breaking the kiss. Alexander glanced down in time to realize that Rosy had a hand down between his own legs and must have just finished stroking himself to completion.

“You are... all right?” Alexander asked, just to be sure.

Rosy gave him a dreamy smile. “More than.” And then he briskly ran his hands across his thighs and got to his feet. “But alas, as much as I’d like to spend the rest of today playing with you, I’m afraid I’ve got a round to do for the bosses this afternoon.” He made his way to the door.

“Wait!” Alexander called out in a strangled voice as Rosy unlocked the door.

Rosy turned and gave Alexander a curious look.

“What... what _was_ that?” Alexander asked, unable to think of any other way to approach the subject.

“Well, it was clear you were trying to provoke me,” Rosy said, a little smirk turning up the corner of his mouth. “So I wasn’t going to back down for anything.”

“I see.” Why was he disappointed? It was the answer Alexander had expected.

“That, and I just really wanted to suck your cock.” Rosy shot one of his wide, startling grins Alexander’s way and was out the door before Alexander could respond.

Well. Alexander definitely wasn’t going to get anything else done for the next little while.

In fact, he rather thought he would be contemplating what Rosy had just said repeatedly throughout the day.

Rosemary kept putting her hand to her lips as she made the drive back into town, pressing her fingers to where Dr. Hilbert’s had been, such a short time ago. After what had happened last time, she’d expected his arousal—after all, the way he’d propositioned her had made it clear that even if he didn’t particularly seem to like her, their lust was a mutual thing—but that kiss...

Well, it had been unexpected, that was all.

She had needed to beat a hasty retreat afterwards. It had unsettled her, that kiss. Bad enough that she’d given in to the temptation to rub herself off before it had happened, worse that it had sent her over the edge. That kiss, the hungry way he’d plundered her mouth despite the fact that she must have tasted just as much of him as she did herself.

Even thinking about it had her squirming in her skin and wondering when Dr. Hilbert would need another supply run. Not for another week, almost certainly, which was _far_ too long. But it wasn’t as if she had off hours. When she wasn’t running errands, she was in the club, helping Adriane with the bookkeeping or keeping the clientele happy, the latter of which was mostly achieved by flirting and dancing her way through the crowd.

A job that had begun to sour on her as of late, as her age began to wear on her. She had been trying to convince Marcus and Miranda that they should find some pretty young things to take over the task, but so far no one had stuck around for more than a couple of weeks, and certainly not long enough that Rosemary felt safe leaving them unsupervised.

She hadn’t had a night to herself in years. Or much of a day, for that matter. Just scraps of free time, snatched where she could get them. She probably shouldn’t be wasting any of them on Dr. Hilbert, not when she wasn’t certain the man liked her, but, well… she had enjoyed that kiss.

So unless he started sending her away in earnest, she would probably put up with his unpleasant nature for as long as he wanted to keep getting off with her. And if there were more kisses like that one along the way, well, all for the better.


End file.
